


Girls In White Dresses

by MaryPSue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (sort of?), Canonical Character Death, Demonic Possession, Gen, Jess Lives, Karen Lives, Mary Lives, Roleswap, brief mention of gore, not all of the boys are so lucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 03:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17841659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: On a mild night in 1983, the Winchester home in Lawrence, Kansas went up in flames. John Winchester was inside it....Before her boyfriend died in a mysterious house fire, Jessica Moore's only experience with monsters and demons was in horror movies. Now, her life is quickly turning into a horror movie, and there doesn't seem to be anything she can do to stop it.





	Girls In White Dresses

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be like three thousand words, tops. I don’t know what happened. 
> 
> If these versions of these characters are wildly inaccurate, please forgive me, I'm still only halfway through s3.

Jessica Moore was twenty-two years old when she came home from the library and found her boyfriend on the ceiling.

She hadn't noticed, at first. That's the worst part. Sam had been trapped up there for who knew how long while Jess had drifted around the bedroom, listening to the shower running in the ensuite, kicking off her shoes, taking off her bra. Reveling in the full-body sigh of relief, of freedom from the everyday agonies of beauty. She'd taken her time picking through her nightgowns and negligees, thinking of Sam in the shower, of the stress in those broad shoulders from all those weeks of studying, of how they could work out that stress together. She'd picked out the silver satiny nightgown a very embarrassed Sam had given her for her last birthday, lost in daydreams and memories as she'd slipped it on. 

She hadn't snapped out of it until something warm and wet had dripped onto her shoulder, trickling down her arm. Something warm, and wet, and red. 

It had taken her way too long to realise it was blood.

Sam was pinned by something invisible with his face down, all six feet something of him stretched out across the bedroom ceiling, eyes big and pleading, mouth moving but no sounds coming out. Blood dripped, steady, from the gash splitting open his bare stomach, splattering against the satiny fabric of Jess' nightgown and staining it, probably forever. Something wet and red pulsed under that terrible wound, and she realised she was looking at his intestines.

Jess had opened her mouth to scream, but just like with Sam, no sound came out. She staggered back, until her legs hit the bed behind her, and her knees crumpled, depositing her on the mattress. The man she loved just stared at her, through her, a voiceless cry for help caught in his throat, as flames rippled out around him.

Everything after that is a bit of a blur. Or at least that's what Jess tells the cops. But there are a handful of razor-edged moments, things that Jess knows are never going to fade, never going to blur. The slam of the door as the older woman had charged in, the soul-wrenching scream she'd let out when she'd seen Sam pinned up there. The smell of the red leather jacket the other woman, the younger one, had wrapped around Jess's head and shoulders as they'd crashed out the window. 

The accusing look Sam had fixed her with as he vanished, forever, in the flames.

That was the first time that Jess met her boyfriend's mother. But it wasn't the day she learned that monsters were real.

That would come later.

...

On a mild night in 1983, the Winchester home in Lawrence, Kansas went up in flames. John Winchester was inside it.

The papers reported that Mary Winchester and her two sons had been lucky to escape. But Mary knew better. Luck had nothing to do with it. The devil had taken his due.

And she'd be damned - literally, if necessary - before she'd let him lay a finger on either of her boys.

They spent too many years running. Too many years hiding, too many years in fear before Mary realised that, if she wanted to protect the little family she had left, she was going to have to stand up and fight. 

So she'd learned. She'd trained, and read, and researched. She'd taken them into the fangs of things that went bump in the night, and come out, bloodied and battered sometimes, but always stronger. One day, she knew, the thing that had taken her husband would come back for them. But this time, she'd be ready for it.

As it turned out, that hadn't saved them either.

Sam...Sam walked away, after. Mary couldn't blame him. She couldn't try to keep him alive if there was nothing for him to live for. And there was always the traitor thought that maybe he'd be safer away from her. Without her.

That thought had only grown stronger after what happened to Dean. Her oldest, her sweet boy, her brave little man. He always had had a reckless streak. He always had taken after his father.

The girl - Cassie - had lived, though. And the first thing she'd asked was how she could help.

For a while, it had just been the two of them, out on the road, saving people, hunting things. Cassie was a quick learner, and an even quicker shot. She knew things - histories, lore - that Mary had never encountered, that no one had ever written down. Or, at least, she knew how to find such things out. And she had a knack for getting people to gossip, which turned out to be more valuable than Mary could have imagined. Mary taught her how to shoot a shotgun, a pistol, how to stab to do the most damage and the least, taught her everything she knew about monsters. They made a good team. 

With Cassie's help, Mary even started to find patterns, omens heralding the presence of the demon that had destroyed her family. They could track it. Which meant they could hunt it. For the first time since the fire, Mary Winchester felt something like hope.

And then the trail of omens led them to Stanford University, and everything went straight to hell.

...

“So let’s run over your statement again, make sure everything’s correct,” the officer says, not unkindly, tapping his pen against the clipboard in his hands. “You are the mother of the deceased?”

_The deceased_. Mary understands why they phrase it that way, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “Sam is my son, yes.”

The officer clears his throat, adjusting his tie, gaze skimming the paper in front of him. He doesn’t meet Mary’s eyes. “And the woman with you was -”

“My daughter-in-law,” Mary says, in her best soccer-mom voice. “Or daughter-in-common-law, I guess. Cassie and my Dean haven’t really had a chance to make it official.”

The officer nods, clearly not interested in any Winchester family dynamics that don’t directly involve the dead one. “And you were at the house because you were paying your son a surprise visit?”

Mary nods, again, feeling a bit like a bobblehead. “He had interviews coming up. For school. He was going to be a lawyer, you know. He was under so much stress, I thought it might be nice to - bring him some baking. Take him out to dinner.” She shakes her head. She doesn’t need to be an Oscar-winning actress to convince the officer she’s too overwhelmed with emotion to go on.

The officer shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “And neither of you saw anything out of the ordinary.”

“Just smoke leaking out of the bedroom window.”

“Which was why you and -” The officer checks his notes. “Cassie Robinson broke in.”

“It was a good thing we did, too. That poor girl. Jessica, wasn’t it? Do you know, is she all right?”

“Being treated for smoke inhalation. If all goes well, she'll be released from hospital tonight,” the officer says. “Well, your stories all line up. We’ll take a closer look at the fire damage, but it sounds like an electrical short. You said it started in the ceiling?”

“That’s what it looked like,” Mary agrees. She just wants out of the police station, out of this small, windowless room that, despite the comfortable furnishings and soft white walls, still looks too much like an interrogation cell. 

She just wants to get back on the scent of the thing that did this to her child.

The officer scribbles on his clipboard for an agonisingly long time, the scratch and scrabble of his pen the only sound besides the whir of the air conditioner. Finally, he turns the clipboard towards Mary, holding out the pen. “Right. I think all that’s left is for you to sign off on this. We’ll release the remains to you as soon as the coroner’s finished with her examination.”

Mary smiles, tightly, and takes clipboard and pen, scrawling her signature at the bottom of the page without looking. “About how long do you expect that’ll take?”

“I really can’t say. Depends on the results of our investigation.” The officer clears his throat again, and then, in a much less stilted voice, adds, “But between you and me, this looks like a straightforward case of misadventure. It shouldn’t be more than a week.”

“Thank you,” Mary says, handing the clipboard back to the officer. His thumb touches hers as he takes it from her, and for the first time, he looks up and actually meets her eyes.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says, his perfunctory professionalism wavering slightly. He holds Mary’s gaze for a moment longer, like there’s something he wants to say, something he can’t quite form into words.

Mary can see the moment he stops trying. “And Mrs. Winchester? I’m very sorry for your loss.”

_You don’t know anything about loss, kid_ , Mary thinks, but on the outside, she just smiles.

...

The ER nurse pulls the curtain back on the bay Jess is waiting in, her smile wary. "You've got a visitor," she says, and then disappears, probably to help somebody who actually needs it.

Jess can't seem to make herself respond. It's like the signals from her brain aren't reaching her body, like there's a wall of static filling her head and clogging up all the nerves.

Sam is dead. Sam was alive, and then he was dead, and Jess watched him go from one to the other and didn't do anything to stop it. Couldn't do anything to stop it. And now Sam is dead and Jess doesn't even know what else she lost in the fire and Sam is dead and she doesn't have a place to live anymore and Sam is dead and the future is terribly, frighteningly uncertain and everything is changed forever and Sam is dead.

The worst part is, a little tiny part of Jess is still back in that afternoon, sitting in the library, knowing home and Sam are both safe and waiting for her. Can't wait to get out of this hospital so she can go home and give her boyfriend a hug and let him wrap her up in his big, warm arms and forget this whole nightmare.

And no matter what, that little, tiny, stupid part of her doesn't seem to be getting the message.

"Jessica?"

Jess can't make herself raise her head, no matter how much she yells at herself mentally for it. The voice isn't familiar, but it's soft, kind, patient, the sort of voice Jess associates with nurses and elementary school teachers. Nurturing.

"You don't know me," the voice continues, still patient, still kind. A weight settles on the end of the hospital bed, and Jess sees dark jeans, mud-spattered boots. She still can't seem to move her head the miniscule amount it would take to look up and see the stranger's face. What would be the point, anyway? Sam is dead. "My name's Mary. I'm Sam's mom."

That, at last, gets Jess to move. She looks up, meets the kind eyes of the woman smiling back at her. She recognises Mary's face right away, even though it's different when it's not contorted in rage and grief too big for one human body to handle. Maybe she would have recognised Mary's voice if Mary had been screaming.

A flash of white-hot guilt sears through Jess at the thought, cutting through the static. She'd lost the man she loved, but Mary - Mary had lost her  _child_. She shouldn't be sitting here, patiently coaxing a complete stranger back to herself. If anything, Jess should be comforting  _her_.

"I'm so sorry," she manages, embarrassed about the hollow sound of her voice, the way it rasps and cracks. "I'm so sorry, I can't imagine -"

Mary reaches out, rests one hand on Jess' knee and gives it a squeeze. "Do you have someplace to stay tonight, honey?"

It's the 'honey' that breaks her. Jess can feel her eyes fill, growing hot and swollen, even as she tries to swallow a sob. Suddenly, more than anything in the world, she just wants her own mom.

"Oh, shh, shhhh," Mary says, scooting closer across the bed so she can wrap an arm around Jess, tug her in to rest her head on Mary's shoulder. She starts to rock, ever so gently, back and forth, humming quiet nonsense, until Jess' shoulders stop heaving and she hiccups her breathing back under control.

"I," she manages, then takes a long breath, rubbing a fist under one eye. "I've got some friends on campus I can stay with. Thank you. I'm sorry." She's embarrassed, now, of her breakdown, can't forget that the woman holding her must also be in so much pain, but - she doesn't want to pull away. "Are you - how are you -"

"Holding up," Mary says wryly, rubbing Jess' back in slow, soothing circles. "If you'd like, you're welcome to stay with me and Cassie, we got a motel room just out of town."

"Thanks, but -" Jess starts, and then asks, "Cassie?"

With impeccable timing, another, younger woman steps around the curtain, a styrofoam coffee cup in each hand. She's got to be two or three years older than Jess, though with her wide eyes and little rosebud mouth, Jess bets she still gets carded at bars.

Her face lights up when she sees Jess, and she hands off one of the coffee cups to Mary, holding out a hand for Jess to shake. "Cassie Robinson. I'm glad to see you're doing okay. No major lacerations?"

"You're the one who pushed me out the window," Jess says. "You probably saved my life. Are  _you_  okay?"

Cassie grins, ruefully, down at the arm she'd extended to Jess. The beige bandage wrapped around it stands out pale against her skin. "Just a couple cuts and scrapes. Nothing to worry about." Her smile turns mischievous, and she adds, "Though you do owe me a new favourite leather jacket."

Jess winces.

"I've always said that a little bit of battle damage just adds character," Mary says, with a conspiratorial wink in Jess' direction. It's clearly meant to be lighthearted, to lift the mood, but for some reason, the words make the bottom drop out of Jess' stomach.  _Battle damage_. All she can think about is the way this very woman, this sweet, considerate, motherly person, who had just held Jess and soothed her while she sobbed her heart out, had kicked her way through Jess' bedroom door with guns literally blazing.

Unless -

"Is... did you... Okay, there's no good way to ask this," Jess says, uncomfortably aware of the way Cassie's smile slips, the piercing gaze Mary levels at her. "Just what the hell happened back there?"

She doesn't miss the meaningful look Cassie and Mary exchange.

"I didn't...actually see my boyfriend gutted and stuck to my bedroom ceiling," Jess pushes on, despite the suddenly awkward silence. "Right? For one thing, I mean, gravity -"

"What do you think you saw?" Mary asks, still gentle, but with something steely under it.

Jess shakes her head. "I don't know. Something out of a horror movie." She reaches up, running a hand through her hair. "Guess I must've hit my head going out that window harder than I realised."

She looks up, at Cassie's suddenly closed-off face, an inexplicable dread washing over her. "Right?"

The silence stretches out just a beat too long before Mary reaches out and gives Jess a pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure that the doctors would know more about that than we would. I'm just glad to know you're okay." She slides off the bed and straightens up, flashing Jess a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "You're sure your friends won't mind putting you up for a few nights?"

Jess nods. She doesn't quite trust her voice.

"Well, then. Lots to do," Mary says, raising her coffee cup. "Cassie?"

Cassie gives a little start, like she'd been elsewhere in her head. She flashes Jess an apologetic smile, patting her pockets. "Hey, let me give you my cell phone number." She triumphantly pulls a little coil-bound book from one jacket pocket and a pen with a logo that can only belong to a motel from the other. She flips past the first few pages in the book, looking for blank paper, and Jess catches a glimpse of complicated symbols sketched over the blue lines.

"Thanks," Jess says. She hadn't really wanted them here when they'd arrived, but now, she isn't sure she wants them to leave.

"You give us a call if there's anything at all you need, sweetheart," Mary says, her smile finally reaching her eyes again.

"Or if anything...strange...happens," Cassie says, reaching out to give Jess the paper with her phone number on it. Jess takes it, warily.

"Anything...'strange'?"

Cassie just shrugs, before turning and following Mary out of the ER bay.

...

Cassie Robinson had had dreams of being a journalist, once.

But that was before. Before she'd lost both parents and the best friends she’d known, lost the man she'd started to love, nearly lost her life. Before the Winchesters.

Before Dean.

She hadn’t believed him, when he’d tried to tell her what was out there, what was coming for them. Cassie knows she’s never going to be able to make up for that. It’s a regret she’ll take to her grave. Maybe, if she’d listened, if she hadn’t been so scared, if she hadn’t wanted to stay in denial and write him off as crazy - 

But there’s no point dwelling on maybes. Dean’s gone, and no amount of regretting and wishing and what-iffing will bring him back.

Cassie still isn't sure why Mary Winchester took her under her wing, but she's done everything she can to be worthy of it. To make sure Mary doesn’t regret it. To make up for what she'd unknowingly taken.

Interview skills, research methods, a sympathetic ear for oral histories, all come in handy trying to track down the real monsters behind cryptids and urban legends. People who won't talk to the state troopers or the US marshals or the FBI agents or the insurance investigators will sometimes talk to a pretty, curious young girl in a bar. Cassie had never handled a gun before meeting Mary, but it turned out not to be so hard. After that, the job’s ninety percent messing around in graveyards. 

And she's gotten to see the country, though admittedly a lot of their jobs have taken them to places Cassie never wants to go again. Sundown towns are still alive and well in the vast, ugly middle of America. There'd been plenty of times she'd been grateful to know Mary had her back, and it wasn't just when they were facing down monsters.

Well. Depending on your definition of "monster".

They make a good team. And what had started out as a partnership of guilt and convenience quickly turned into something more. Cassie lost her mother. Mary  lost her children. Cassie would never dare say it in so many words, but - their broken edges fit pretty well together. And even though Mary never says much, Cassie gets the sense that she feels the same way.

So it comes as a nasty shock when Cassie wakes up in a motel room somewhere in East Palo Alto, the day after they’d been too late to save Sam, and finds Mary gone.

...

There’s a guy standing just outside the caution tape, when Jess gets back from the admin office, staring up at the blackened siding of the house, the blue tarp flapping over the part of the roof that burned through. Jess can’t bring herself to look at it for too long, so she focuses on the stranger instead. She can’t say she’s ever seen him around campus, but it’s a big school and there’ve been a lot of gawkers popping up out of the woodwork since the fire. He looks a little older than most of the students Jess knows, dark hair cropped close to his skull in an almost military cut, both hands tucked in the pockets of his battered leather jacket, feet planted shoulder-width apart like he’s expecting something to come out of nowhere to knock him down and he’d like to see it try.

As Jess draws closer, she notices he also has fantastic cheekbones and a pout she knows several of her girlfriends would kill for. There’s something about that face that’s strangely soft, at odds with the tough-guy image he’s projecting, and Jess finds herself liking him, just a little, before they even make eye contact. In the strangest way, something about that surprising softness incongruously combined with that unmistakably masculine image reminds her sharply, painfully, of Sam.

The guy glances over his shoulder at her as she steps up to the caution tape, squinting a little in the sun. “You knew the guy who lived here?” he asks, and Sam’s face just before the flames had hidden him from view flashes across Jess’ vision again. She blinks, like that’ll help, turning away from the house.

“I did,” she says. “Sam and I were dating.” 

The stranger looks almost stricken. “Shit. I’m sorry,” he says, turning back to the house and saying nothing more. Somehow, it’s more comforting than all Jess’ friends’ gushing.

“It’s okay,” she says. It’s not, but - “Did you know him?”

The stranger huffs out a half-laugh, one side of his mouth twisting up in a crooked smile and revealing a flash of white teeth. “You could say that.” He finally turns to properly face Jess. “Name’s Dean. I’m - I guess I  _was_  Sam’s big brother.”

Jess stares at him for a moment longer than she knows is polite, trying to see Sam in the bones under his skin, the green of his eyes, the way he carries himself. She’s not sure whether she’s relieved or disappointed not to find what she’s looking for.

“Hey, do you want to come in?” she asks, at last.

...

“Singer’s Curio Cabinet, antiques and collectibles. You got Karen.”

Cassie doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. “Have - you haven’t heard from Mary, have you?”

Karen Singer is quiet for a moment on the other end of the line, and there’s a rustle of paper. “Sorry, Cass, haven’t heard word one. I thought you two were down in California?”

“We are. I mean, we were, but we got split up, and she didn’t leave a note or a message -”

“You try the phone book motel trick?”

Cassie shakes her head before remembering that Karen can’t see her. She isn’t sure how to explain that part of her doesn’t really think Mary’s trying to find her. Doesn't really think Mary wants to be found.

Thankfully, she’s spared the moment of existential crisis when the phone beeps loudly in her ear. 

“Sorry, Karen, I’m getting another call,” she says. “Maybe it’s her.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” Karen says, only a little sarcastic. Normally, Cassie would have some kind of retort, but she doesn’t want to miss Mary. She just says a hurried goodbye and clicks over to the incoming call.

“What’s going on? Are you all right?” 

Mary doesn’t try to explain or apologise. She just says, “I found him.”

Cassie’s breath stops in her throat. “You - ?”

“I found him,” Mary repeats. There’s a pause, the sound of her drawing in a deep breath, before she says, “Dean is here.”

...

“Sam never mentioned a big brother,” Jess says, pulling two bottles of some cheap, horrible beer that she’s pretty sure was left over from a party she doesn’t know how long ago from the fridge. The light flickers three times with a nasty electric buzz before she slams the door on it. Damn thing’s been on its last legs for weeks, and the fire just seems to have made it worse. Jess just hopes it doesn’t die before she can get all her food - and the rest of her stuff, whatever's salvageable - moved out of the house. That's really what she was here to do today. That, and see if any of her clothes survived. She can't keep borrowing Abby's. “Although, he barely ever talks - sorry,  _talked_  about his family at all.” 

She shakes her head as she walks back into the living room, where Dean's made himself at home on her couch. Jess hands him the bottle, and Dean shoots her that crooked grin again, salutes her with the bottle before popping the lid off with his thumb. “It still feels wrong to talk about him in the past tense, you know?”

Dean shakes his head, looks up to stare hard at the blank screen of the TV, and doesn’t answer Jess’ question. “It’s been a while since I saw him. When Sam left for college we weren’t exactly on the best of terms.” He looks down at his beer, and Jess has to turn all her attention to uncapping her own just so she doesn’t have to see the expression on his face. “I’d kill to have him back for five minutes, just to tell him -” He cuts himself off. 

In the heavy silence that follows, Jess tries and fails not to see that accusing look Sam had fixed on her in his last moments again.

“I think I know what you mean,” she says, and then takes a long drink of her beer to keep from saying anything else ridiculous and too personal to this man she’s only just barely met. It doesn’t work. “I miss him like I think I'd miss one of my arms if it got ripped off. I think I’m going crazy. I keep dreaming about him -”

It’s her turn to cut herself off before she can go somewhere dark.

“I was just on my way back from the admin office,” she says, slowly. “I’m withdrawing from all my classes. I can’t -” She takes a deep breath, tries to tell herself that the smoke she can smell is just lingering in the walls and the burnt part of the roof that’s covered with a tarp now. “I can’t finish this semester. Not like this. Not without a real place to live, not with exams so close, not with -” Not with Sam’s face still haunting her every time she closes her eyes. 

Dean nods, but doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t look up at her. Jess has to admit she’s grateful for the moment to compose herself.

“Anyway,” she says. “What brought you out here?”

Dean looks up at her, lips pursed and eyebrows raised, and Jess realises what a stupid question that was. She rolls her beer bottle between her palms, forcing a laugh. “Right.” She casts around for something, anything, to change the subject to. “Are you...here with your mom?” 

Something dark flickers across Dean’s face before it’s replaced with a smile. “Nah.” No explanation. Jess gets the clear sense that this part of the conversation is over. 

She’s a little disappointed. The events of that night are - well, there’s just so much she remembers that’s completely impossible, so much that those women - Cassie, and Mary, and wasn't that one hell of a way to meet your boyfriend's mom - had totally failed to explain. Jess hadn’t realised until just now that she’d sort of been hoping Dean would have the answers to all her unanswered questions. Just who the hell  _was_  her boyfriend, anyway? More and more, she’s starting to feel like she never knew Sam at all.

“How long were you two together?” Dean asks, clearly throwing the foundering conversation a life preserver, and Jess grabs onto it gratefully.

“Almost three years. I can’t believe - it’s hard to imagine that there’s a future without him in it.” There’s a little bead of condensation tracking down the neck of Jess’ beer bottle, and she watches it, fixated, until it hits her hand and vanishes in the crook between her thumb and forefinger.

Dean whistles under his breath. “Sammy musta been pretty serious about you.”

“I - I was pretty serious about him,” Jess admits to her beer. “If he’d asked. I would’ve said yes.”

Dean’s laugh is rough, harsh. “Too bad he never got the chance.”

Jess shakes her head. She forces down another swallow of the awful beer. What the hell is she supposed to say to that?

“Why are you really here?” she asks, quietly. “Talking to me? What’s this about?”

“Can’t a guy try to get to know his estranged brother post-mortem?” Dean asks, a little too jaunty, a little too devil-may-care. “He chose to spend the last years of his life with you. You probably know him better by now than I do.” His smile is horrible.

“I didn’t - I had no idea about the...situation with his family,” Jess says. She’s dimly aware of how defensive she sounds. “I wasn’t trying to - keep him away from anybody, or anything. He always avoided the subject whenever we talked about where we were going for school breaks, or -”

“Whoa, hey, I didn’t say I blame you,” Dean says, raising a hand, palm out. 

Jess forces herself to take a deep, ragged breath.

“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I just keep thinking -”  _of how Sam had stared right through her, of how she hadn’t even noticed he was up there until_  -

“That you shoulda been able to do something,” Dean says, like he’s finishing her sentence, like he’s reading her mind. “That you shoulda saved him. Somehow.”

Jess bites her bottom lip.

“Yeah,” she whispers. And then, before she can think better of it, rein it in, "I'd give anything to get him back."

There’s something, in the silence that follows, like a bass note too deep for her to really hear, like the feeling of eyes on the back of her neck. Nothing’s actually changed, and yet, Jess has the sudden and inexplicable feeling that the air’s...charged, somehow. Humming, like the moment before a lightning strike. She’s suddenly, intensely aware of the open space around her, of how many windows the living room has, how many places for people to look in at her unseen. How unprotected she is. 

Dean’s voice is quiet, low. “Anything?”

Jess lets out a shaky laugh, putting her beer down on the coffee table to rub her bare arms. They’ve broken out all over with gooseflesh. 

“Hang on, I think -” she starts, trying to come up with some excuse to get out of the room. Why had she invited a stranger into her house? She’d taken him on his word, but - Sam never  _had_  mentioned an older brother. And now she’s alone, in her house, with him, and no one else knows he’s here... “Uh, the fridge has been on the fritz, and I can’t hear it anymore - I just wanna check that it’s still running.”

She stands up and walks into the kitchen, trying to keep it natural, trying not to walk too fast. She can feel Dean’s eyes boring into her back the whole way.

As soon as Jess is out of the living room, she ducks around the doorframe, pulling her phone from her pants pocket with shaking fingers. She searches through her contacts, pulls up the cell phone number Cassie had given her in the hospital. She'd said to call if Jess needed anything, or if anything strange happened. Jess is suddenly, inexplicably sure that this counts.

She hesitates with her thumb on the call button, though, before thinking better of it and tapping out a text instead. Maybe Jess is just blindly putting her trust in another stranger, but Mary and Cassie had shown up at just the right moment and dragged her out of a burning building. They'd saved her life. 

Though what if the reason they'd been there just in time to save Jess’ life was because they'd put it in danger in the first place?

A shadow falls across Jess’ face, and she only barely manages to stifle a scream. Dean gives her a strange look, like he’s trying to decide if she’s a few side dishes short of a picnic, and jabs a thumb at the fridge. “Sounds like it’s running fine now. Hey, do you want me to take a look at it? I don’t know anything about fridges, but I do know a lot about cars, and how different can they really be?”

Jess lets out a long, shaky breath, manages a smile. 

“No, I think I’ll complain to the school about it until they either replace it or kick me out of student housing,” she says, with admirable nonchalance, she thinks. She slides out around Dean, making her way across the kitchen towards the knife block, just in case. “Sorry, I just - why did you ask me -”

“If you’d really give anything to get Sam back?” Dean’s smile is blinding but, Jess realises now, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Like I said, my brother chose to spend the last years of his life with you. Maybe I just wanted to make sure the person he chose deserved him.”

It’s a good answer. It makes sense. But Jess’ skin is still crawling.

She glances down at her phone, relieved to see that Cassie's already texted back. But she hasn’t answered Jess’ question. Instead, there’s just one line of text, and it's another question.  _is he there right now?_

_in house w/ me. is he legit?_

The next text appears less than a second later, like Cassie was sitting staring at her phone, waiting for Jess to respond. It's short, only three words.

_get out NOW_

Slowly, Jess looks back up at Dean.

Dean, who smiles ruefully, shrugging both shoulders. “Too bad,” he says. “If you were serious, I know somebody who coulda made it happen.”

He blinks, and when he opens his eyes, they’re  _wrong_. Yellow, and inhuman, and  _wrong_.

Jess grabs blindly at the knife block, but Dean waves a hand and it’s like she’s been hit by an invisible truck. Jess goes flying backwards, across the kitchen, and slams into the cabinets so hard that she sees little black and white stars flickering across her vision. She struggles to suck in a breath, dimly aware that her feet have left the ground, that her back is scraping against the cabinet doors, that she’s being dragged up the wall by whatever invisible hand is holding her pinned there. 

“Who were you texting?” Dean asks, casually, like he isn’t in the middle of somehow telekinetically throttling Jess. He keeps one hand up as he kneels to retrieve her dropped phone, but shows no other sign that he’s even breaking a sweat. Jess gasps for air. The swimming, flashing stars are getting thicker.

Dean flips her phone open and clicks through her messages for a moment, a slow smile crossing his face. “Cassie?” he asks, glancing up at Jess. If it weren’t for the flash of those sickening eyes, he’d look like a little kid on Christmas morning. 

Jess grits her teeth, and doesn’t answer. Not that she could have even if she’d wanted to. There’s still no air making its way down her throat, and her limbs are all starting to feel dangerously weak.

Dean chuckles, still grinning like he’s about to tear into the most beautifully-wrapped present. “Well, this is even better than I expected! Two for the price of one.”

He looks up at Jess, still struggling weakly against the force holding her in the air, and says, “Let’s see how long it takes them to come charging to the rescue.”

...

_in house w/ me. is he legit?_

Cassie’s read and reread the text more times in the last minute than she can count. Trying to make it say something other than what it says. Trying to make it mean something other than what it means.

She just hopes that, when they find Jess, she’s still breathing.

Mary speeds through another red light, knuckles white on the wheel. She veers around a station wagon that comes out of nowhere, the Impala fishtailing for a second before Mary gets it back under control. Even with the speed, even with the reckless driving, Cassie can’t shake the feeling that they’re already too late.

She flips through the book in her lap, again, not really seeing the cramped black writing that spiders all over the page. She’s long since memorized the exorcism ritual, whispering it under her breath when she lies awake at night, singing it along to the tune of her favourite songs on the radio. Practicing, and hoping.

And waiting.

Now that the day she’s been waiting for so long is finally here, Cassie’s determined not to let her nerves get the best of her. After all, the stakes are a little higher here than the success or failure of a middle-school play. But - it’s hard. It’s been years since the last time she came face-to-face with Dean, or at least with the thing that’s wearing him now. She’d barely made it out alive.

Cassie reaches over into the back seat, twists the thick fabric of the quilt Karen had given them forever ago in one hand. She has to force herself to let it go when she realises she’s wringing it, hard. She’s not sure what popping a seam will do, but now is not the time to find out.

They’re only going to get one shot at this. Cassie plans to make it count.

...

Jess’ vision is starting to tunnel out around the edges when the loud rumble and rattle of an engine pulls up the drive and abruptly dies. Dean turns to look out the window, staring grimly as he edges over to twitch the filmy curtains aside. A painful hope rises in Jess’ throat the longer he stands there, frowning, only to be squashed when Dean flashes that rakish grin back at her.

He straightens the lapels of his battered leather jacket, shakes out both arms with a flick of the wrists. “It’s showtime,” he says, with a wink up at Jess, just as there’s an explosive  _crash!_  from the front door.

Mary’s the first to appear in the kitchen doorway, pistol raised, eyes flinty. But she pauses, just for a moment, when she sees Dean, and Jess’ stomach drops. Whoever -  _what_ ever - Dean really is, he at least hadn’t lied when he’d said he was Sam’s brother. He’s Mary’s son. And Mary’d just had to watch, helpless, while one of her sons died.

Mary’s going to hesitate. But Jess can already tell that Dean won’t.

By the way Dean's grinning, she can tell he knows it too.

"Well, if it isn't mommy dearest!" Dean says brightly. Mary's eyebrows draw together in a frown as she takes careful aim, and Dean clicks his tongue warningly. "I wouldn't. You shoot me with that popgun, it's Dean who's gonna feel it."

"Get out of him," Mary says, between clenched teeth. She jerks her head in Jess' direction, not taking her eyes or her gun off of Dean. "And let her go."

"Sorry, Mary, Mary, quite contrary, but I don't think I'm gonna do that," Dean - whatever's possessing Dean? - says, with a mock-sad shake of his head. "We had an arrangement. It's not my fault you didn't hold up your end -"

Whatever else he was going to say is cut off abruptly when Cassie crashes through the kitchen window and flings a brightly-coloured quilt over his head.

For a beat, nobody moves.

The laughter that rises from under that quilt is low and dark and horrible. "Really? This is your big plan? How exactly was this supposed to work? It's not like I'm a wild animal you gotta get to the vet -"

There's motion, under the quilt, the top fluffing up like something hit it from underneath. But it doesn't budge.

Dean is perfectly still and dangerously silent under the bright fabric for a moment. Then it explodes with activity, like it's being pummeled from underneath its draping folds, hammered with powerful fists, battered by an unfelt gale. Still, it doesn't so much as slide down to one side. Whatever force was choking Jess slowly eases, as though Dean's concentration is shifting elsewhere, and she gasps down lungfuls of precious air.

"Oh, you sneaky little bitch," Dean says, finally, a note of begrudging respect beside the murderous anger in his voice.

"Portable devil's trap," Cassie says, shaking her dark curls out and taking a deep breath as she flips open a book that looks like it's seen several witch trials and possibly the bottom of a bog. "It's a great idea, I wish I could take all the credit."

"Demons never see it coming," Mary agrees, sharp. "And you're not getting out of there in that body unless the lines break."

Dean chuckles, and it's back to that horrible, dark sound, like he knows something they don't.

" 'That body'?" he says. "Mary, I'm wounded. You don't think of me as your son?"

"Shut up," Mary snaps. She nods in Cassie's direction, and Cassie looks down at the book, begins to read. The words that fall off her tongue sound like Latin to Jess, though she has to admit she's better at reading it than speaking it, and Cassie's going way faster than Jess’ Latin prof. Sounds like something to do with spirits.

Dean's laughter doesn't stop. Low, and rolling, and horrible, it rises from underneath the quilt until it almost drowns out Cassie's voice. She speaks up a little, her pitch rising, and Jess feels -  _something_ , that charge in the air again, a wind that isn't a wind whipping her curls around and rattling the cabinets.

Still, the laughter doesn't stop.

It doesn't stop until Cassie spits the last words, and the wind, the rumbling under the floorboards, the strange charge in the air all cut off abruptly like they were never there. The force holding Jess pinned releases all at once, without warning, and she drops, slamming to the kitchen linoleum on hands and knees. Cassie shoots one long, agonised look at the quilt and the shape still under it before she hurries over to crouch beside Jess, setting the book aside to check her over for injuries.

Mary doesn't take her eyes off the quilt at all.

Jess notices it before anyone else does, not that that helps. It's just a split second when that - charge, that electric pressure, jolts back through her like a live wire. Jess tries to scream, though it comes out as more of a strangled cough, clutching her suddenly-throbbing head. It feels like someone drove an ice pick straight through her eye.

And then the quilt bursts into flame.

Cassie shouts, and Mary steps back, and the figure under the quilt burns and burns merrily until the quilt is nothing but ash and a few charred scraps of fabric. Dean doesn't move, just stares Mary down, as the last remnants flake away. For some reason - probably fire being hard enough to summon into existence with your mind without trying to get it to differentiate between different kinds of fabric - Dean's jacket and shirt have also burnt almost completely away, leaving quite a lot of bare chest on display. Jess has just enough presence of mind to realise whatever 'lines' Mary was talking about are almost certainly broken now, before her brain goes back to its stunned loop on how ridiculous it is that they're all frozen in numb horror at the sight of a man who looks like a Calvin Klein ad.

Well, okay, not exactly like a Calvin Klein ad. Any marketing agency would probably have airbrushed out the nasty burn scar just over his heart, the one like a circle with a line slashed partway through it. And the eyes. Yeah, the eyes would probably be a dealbreaker.

"You really should start thinking of me as your son, Mary," Dean says, that crooked, charming smile tugging at his lips. "Because this body's mine. And I don't plan on giving it up any time soon."

Mary moves, but Dean moves faster. With a flick of his wrist, Mary goes flying backwards out of the kitchen, her pistol clattering to the kitchen floor. Jess hears the crash from the hall, and winces. 

Cassie straightens up, reaching behind her for a gun Jess can see tucked into her waistband, but Dean slams her back against the wall with a tilt of his head and a grin.

"Oh, you should hear him in here," he says, sauntering over to Cassie, one hand jammed into the pocket of his slightly-scorched jeans and the other tapping his temple. "Threatening me - real creative ones, too - begging me not to hurt you two."

He smiles like a wolf baring its teeth. "You should've heard him whine when we killed Sammy."

Jess' heart kicks once, painfully, in her chest.

"Don't you call him that," Mary's voice says, from the door. Jess spins, sees her standing, but leaning heavily against the doorframe. There's a trickle of blood working its way down out of her hairline, across her forehead, and she's cradling her right arm close against her body. "Don't you dare call him that. Not with that mouth."

Dean glances back over his shoulder at her, shaking his head as he breaks into a broad, pleasant grin. "What, I can’t give stupid nicknames to my own baby brother?"

"He isn't yours," Mary snaps, and Dean barks out a laugh.

"Oh, Mary, Mary, Mary. How quickly you forget." He waves a hand dismissively at Cassie, flattening her with her arms splayed out, crucifixion-style, against the wall, before taking three heavy, deliberate steps towards Mary. All his attention is fixed on her, their eyes locked in a furious glare. He doesn't notice when Jess reaches out along the floor, stretching an arm out for Mary's dropped pistol. "You broke our deal. Which means -" Dean raises out both arms, palms out, sort of like he's going in for a hug. "Actually, he is."

"And yet you killed him," Mary spits into Dean's face. Jess' fingertips just graze the hilt of the pistol, and she edges forward to wrap her hand around it, taking the chance that, focused as he is on Mary, Dean won't notice the movement in his peripheral vision. "How's that figure into your little plan?"

Dean clicks his tongue disapprovingly in the back of his mouth, shaking his head even as he grins, too wide, too white. "Y'know, I really thought you Winchesters might have started to figure it out by now."

He blinks, and Mary flies straight up in the air, like she's been shot from a cannon, to slam against the kitchen ceiling. Jess is struck by the horrible certainty that she can smell smoke.

Dean's smile is much too self-satisfied, his voice sickeningly smug as he stares up at Mary, pinned like a butterfly on a corkboard. "There's always a plan."

Jess stands, on shaking legs, and fires straight for his heart.

Or, at least, she tries to. But the trigger under her finger just makes a pathetic little clicking noise and refuses to budge.

Dean looks over at her, his expression blank for once, a slight frown furrowing his brow like he's trying to figure out what she's doing. "Trying to kill me with a weapon with the safety on?" He shakes his head. "At least you're pretty."

It's like that heavy electrical charge in the air wraps itself around Jess' hands. She can't feel her fingers as they deftly click something on the handle of the gun, can only watch in horror as her own arms bend at the elbow without her input.

The barrel of the gun is cold under her chin.

Mary shouts something hoarse and angry, and behind her, Jess can hear Cassie struggling, but a little bubble of silence seems to have cocooned her and the gun. She tries to get even just one finger to obey her, to twitch, to wiggle. All she gets for her efforts is a stabbing headache.

"It's so tragic," Dean says, still watching her, unruffled. "You know, officer, she told me herself that she didn't know how to go on without him."

Jess struggles to suck in a breath as her hands wedge the nose of the pistol up into the soft spot under her jaw. She thinks she can feel, through the numbing, buzzing static running up her arms, her index finger starting to depress the trigger. The pain in her head is throbbing in time with her heartbeat,  _stab, stab, stab_  directly into her right eye. 

Somewhere in her mind, somewhere she hopes connects to her fingers, with all the strength she has, Jess  _pushes_.

A thunderous expression crosses Dean's face when the gun doesn't go off, when Jess slowly lowers the gun to aim back at him again. It's strange, but that static-charge prickle she'd felt all up her arms is receding, from above her elbows all the way down to her first knuckles.

She's got a clear shot. But before she can pull the trigger, there's...a spark, the static charge releasing from her fingertips, and Dean flinches back.

He blinks, raising his head slowly, like he's waking from a deep sleep, and Jess' breath catches in her throat. For the first time since he'd pinned her to the kitchen wall, his eyes are - they're back to green, and confused, and frightened. Human.

Jess can't move. She stands there, rooted to the spot, staring back at the man staring at her.

Then Dean hisses in a breath between his teeth, one hand flying up to the side of his head as he crumples inwards, squeezing his eyes shut. There's something different about his voice, too, some smoothness or oiliness that Jess had barely even noticed that's suddenly missing, a raw rasp of fear taking its place. "Get the hell out of here -  _shit_  - all of you,  _run_! I can't -"

There's a thump as Cassie's boots hit the ground behind Jess, and Mary shouts as she tumbles down, hitting the counter before she collapses to the ground. She groans, pushing herself to her feet with obvious difficulty. Jess takes a slow step backwards, grip tightening on the gun in her hands.

Dean takes a long breath in, straightening up, and Jess takes another step back. The stress and anguish smooth off his face as he rolls his neck from shoulder to shoulder, to be replaced with contempt.

When he opens his eyes again, Jess is totally unsurprised to see they’re back to that sick, poisonous yellow.

“Well, well,  _well_ ,” he says. “Jessica Moore. Colour me surprised. And here I didn’t even think you were a contender. I’ll have to keep a closer eye on you.” He winks. The grin probably would have been charming, under other circumstances.

“How do you know my -” Jess starts, but Dean’s already turned away from her, looking around the kitchen.

“Well, ladies, it’s been a  _slice_ ,” he says, the last word hissing with ironic emphasis. “But I’ve got things to do, people to see, you know how it goes. What say we call this one a draw?”

Before anyone can move, he snaps his fingers, and a wall of flame erupts from the kitchen floor, hiding him from view.

...

“Karen’s” turns out to be an unassuming little blue house on an unassuming plot of land a little ways outside of a town Jess never would have willingly chosen to visit. A tasteful white wooden sign at the end of the drive, trimmed with the same gingerbread carving that decorates the peak of the roof, identifies it as “Singer’s Curio Cabinet: Antiques & Collectibles”.

Just based on everything that’s happened in the last forty-eight hours, Jess is willing to bet antiques and collectibles aren’t the only things Karen Singer deals in.

Karen herself is a square-faced, stern-looking woman with deep lines etched around her eyes and silver scattered throughout her thick dark hair. She greets Mary and Cassie with a scowl and a shake of her head, letting out an exasperated sigh in response to Cassie’s greeting. “You’d better come in.”

Cassie shoots Jess a look, eyebrows raised, a half-smile half-grimace darting across her face. “Oh, she’s pissed,” she whispers to Jess, as Karen leads them through a huge front room crammed with rusted farm equipment, brass bedsteads and battered dressers, and shelves of old glass bottles and jars with heavy iron keys dangling underneath.

The back of the house looks much more lived-in, though with a similar spirit to the store out front. It’s tastefully decorated, if by somebody whose tastes run a little more to the overstated and rococo than Jess’, but the flocked damask wallpaper and elegant Queen Anne furniture are almost hidden under stacks of books, carved wooden masks, large jars with murky, indistinct contents, tattered fabric dolls, rough wooden stakes, guns and knives in various states of assembly...

Karen motions them in without looking back, walking straight through to the kitchen. Mary follows, and Cassie pauses just long enough for Karen’s voice to float back. “Don’t you girls hang around out there sticking your noses into everything. I won’t be responsible if you get yourselves cursed.”

“Cursed?” Jess asks, and Cassie nods.

“Try not to touch anything.”

“Of course,” Jess mutters to herself, brushing aside a bundle of herbs hung to dry in the kitchen doorway. “Of course now I’m standing in a witch’s cottage in the middle of nowhere. Because things weren’t already weird enough.”

“Karen’s no witch,” Mary says, over her shoulder. “You’ll know a witch when you meet one. Nasty customers.”

Karen’s got her back to them all, still, filling a kettle at the sink. She gives no sign that she’s heard Mary’s comment, her voice clipped and tight as she says, “You went after him again.”

Mary draws in a long breath, lets it out slow.

“Oh boy,” Cassie mutters, edging closer to Jess like that’ll keep the other two women from overhearing. “Here come the fireworks.”

“I’m talkin’ to you too, Cassie Robinson,” Karen says, cranking the tap hard so that the water shuts off abruptly. “We still aren't even sure that Colt you dug up stories on is real, or just a myth. What were you  _thinking_?”

“I was  _thinking_ ,” Mary says, quietly, “that a damn demon has my son.”

“Watch your language in my house, Mary Winchester,” Karen says, like it’s automatic, turning to put the kettle on the stove. Jess gets the feeling that that’s a remnant of an old argument, the kind that’s never really resolved.

“It’s not strong language, it’s an accurate description,” Mary says, equally automatically, stepping around the little round table in the middle of the kitchen floor. “Karen, please. He went after  _Sam_. What was I supposed to do?”

Karen slams the kettle down on the heavy black range with a metallic  _bang_  that makes Jess jump. She stands with her back to them all for another moment, her shoulders rising and falling with a long, deep breath, before turning around. Jess takes a step back at the sight of her face.

“You were  _supposed_  to have some kind of a backup plan,” she says, her voice cracking, before she clears her throat, her frown growing deeper as she pulls herself back under control. “You were  _supposed_  to let me know where you were going, what you were going after. You were  _supposed_  to do anything other than put yourself and an innocent kid in harm’s way without any real plan and without knowing what you were getting into!” 

Mary says nothing, and Karen cuts herself off with an angry harrumph, shaking her head as she turns back to the stove. She turns the burner on with a sharp yank, the sudden  _fwoosh_  of fire making Jess’ heart leap into her throat. “And Cassie! I thought you knew better than this.”

“Sorry, Karen. Everything happened so fast -” Cassie starts, but Mary interrupts her.

“And who says we don’t know what we’re dealing with?”

“Do  _you_  know what that symbol you told me Dean had on his chest is?” Karen demands. “Because I  _do_. That’s an anchor. Your demon’s got its grubby claws dug right into Dean’s flesh. You won’t be able to budge it unless you can break that symbol, and it’d be suicide just to try to get that close.”

“So it’s suicide,” Mary says, soft, dangerous. Cassie shoots her a startled look.

Karen sags back against the counter, the anger draining from her face. She suddenly looks very old, and very tired.

“Don’t be a fool, Mary. You know neither of those boys’d want you doing something like that. And Dean’d never forgive himself if you got hurt trying to save him. Especially not if he was the one that hurt you.”

For a moment, Mary looks like she’s going to argue, before deflating herself.

“Well, what about me?” Cassie protests. “What am I here, chopped liver?” She glares from Karen to Mary. “I’m not some stupid kid who tagged along for kicks, I’m not some job you just have to protect until the monster’s dead, okay? I  _told_  you. I’m in this.” She sucks in a deep breath. The fire drains out of her voice, leaving it small and surprisingly vulnerable as she says, “Let me help. I want him back too. Even if it’s just for long enough to tell him I’m sorry.”

Silence settles over the kitchen, thick and gloomy as an autumn fog. 

“Maybe there’s another way,” Jess says, startling even herself. “Something happened, back at school, when Dean -”

“The demon,” Cassie corrects her, firmly.

“When that...demon tried to make me shoot myself,” Jess continues. She almost can’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth. Surely this is all a nightmare and she just fell asleep on the couch after one too many episodes of  _Buffy_. “I - it wasn’t easy, but I resisted it. Somehow. There was, like, a spark. And for a second afterwards, I think...Dean was back in the driver’s seat.”

She swallows, hard, in the teeth of the stares all three turn towards her.

“You’re right,” Cassie says, slowly, at last. “I thought maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see, but -”

“Is  _that_  what all that about being a contender was about?” Mary asks. Jess shakes her head. 

“No, honestly, that stuff stumped me too. But - maybe, if I can figure out what I did and how I did it -”

But Karen’s shaking her head. “Jess, right? It’s sweet of you to offer, Jess, but even if you knew what you were getting into, that just sounds like a trap. Demons lie. They’re excellent actors.”

Jess bites down on her bottom lip, trying not to let Sam’s accusing stare fill her vision again. “Like Cassie said. I want to help. Please, if I can do something -”

“All right.” Karen crosses her arms over her chest. “Let’s say it was real. Do you even know how to do it again?”

Jess rolls her lower lip between her teeth, considering how to respond.

Karen snorts. “Didn’t think so. No. That’s too much of a wild card to bet our lives on.”

Cassie shakes her head, her eyes blazing. “So then what? Are we just supposed to sit around here and - crochet doilies while that  _thing_  roams around hurting people, wearing the man I love like a cheap suit -”

Karen fixes her with a steely look, and Cassie bites off her own tirade with a scowl.

“I think we all know what we’re supposed to do here,” Karen says, shifting that penetrating look from Cassie to Mary. “At this point, Dean’s as much of a lost cause as Sam. We gotta focus on getting rid of that demon before it can do any more damage.”

She pauses a moment, eyes locked with Mary’s. “Whatever that takes.”

“You’re asking me to kill my own son,” Mary says, her voice so icy Jess could swear the temperature in the room drops several degrees.

Karen shakes her head. “I know you want to hope, Mary, but - Dean wouldn’t want you to let this go on this way. That thing used him to kill his own brother, for the love of all things holy! You can’t tell me he wouldn’t want you to end this.”

“Maybe this isn’t about what Dean would or wouldn’t want,” Mary says, gripping the back of the chair in front of her so hard her knuckles go white on the carved wood.

“Don’t I know it,” Karen mutters, and there’s a hint of contempt in her voice. “Listen, I know this is hard as anything, I know you still want to salvage what you can outta all this hurt, but - sometimes you just gotta do what needs to be done.” Jess is suddenly and immensely glad not to be on the receiving end of Karen’s laser stare. “Sam knew that. You know Dean knows that -”

“Did Bobby?”

The two words ring in the sudden silence like a slap. Karen looks stricken, like Mary had just reached out and shoved her against the hot stove. Mary herself looks horrified by the words that had come out of her own mouth, horrified and a little sick.

The silence slowly turns to a high-pitched whistle as the kettle boils. Karen reaches out to turn the burner off, turning her back to Mary with what looks to Jess like enormous effort, pulling chipped china and plain tea bags from the cupboard beside the stove. 

Finally, she turns back to the rest of the kitchen. Her expression is back to an echo of its former no-nonsense toughness, though she still looks very white. “For the sake of our friendship, I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that,” she says, heavily, and Mary nods, once, eyes flicking down towards her boots.

“Who...” Cassie starts, but looks around the room and seems to decide against it. Jess agrees with her. She’s burning with questions, but - there’s a time and a place.

“I just - you know I can’t just let that demon win,” Mary says, and there’s a pleading note in her voice that Jess has never heard before. The steel seeps back into it, though, as Mary says, “He can’t have them. Either of them.”

Karen takes a breath in, closing her eyes as she lets it out in a long sigh. “You better not be saying what I think you’re saying.” She opens her eyes, a rueful expression settling onto her face and softening the severity of her frown, before taking a step around the table towards Mary. “Look, maybe I can’t know what this is like for you, but I think I got an inkling. And they might not be my sons, but -”

“You’re right,” Mary says, shortly, stepping back. “They’re not your sons.”

She turns, and stalks out of the kitchen, out into the antique shop. A moment later, the merry jingle of a bell and the slam of a door tell everyone inside that Mary Winchester has left the building.

“Don’t be a damned fool, Mary!” Karen shouts after her retreating back, and Cassie gives her a wide-eyed look. Karen shrugs one shoulder, turning back to the tea things. “She’s right, though don’t you dare tell her I said that. 's not foul language when it’s an accurate description.”

Cassie shakes her head, brow furrowing in confusion. “What do you -” She stops. “ ‘Either of them’. Oh god.”

She nearly pushes over the table as she sprints out of the kitchen, calling Mary’s name. Jess listens to the sound of her footsteps drumming against floorboards until they fade off the porch.

When she looks back, Karen’s watching her with a pinched smile. “Sorry you had to hear all that.”

Jess shrugs. She’s painfully aware of how inadequate anything she could say might be.

Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, she settles on, “Do you really think - what happened back at the house, it was just a trick? You don’t think I really have some kind of - freakish demon-banishing power?” 

She doesn’t add,  _you don’t think I’m trapped in this nightmare because somehow this nightmare’s trapped inside me._  She doesn’t add,  _you don’t think that maybe there really was something I could have done, something that could have saved Sam, if only I’d known about it before it was too late._ She doesn’t add,  _you don’t think that it could somehow have been my fault._

Karen gives her a searching look, like she can hear everything Jess didn’t say anyway.

“I think that thing wanted to hurt Mary as bad as it could,” she says, at last. “And I think it knew she was too close on its tail. I think, just then, giving her false hope that her boy’s still in there would’ve saved its sorry hide, and was the meanest thing it could’ve done to her.”

Jess lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding, feeling tension seep from her shoulders. She tucks a lock of hair back behind one ear, matching Karen’s smile with one of her own. “You know, I think I’m finally starting to understand why Sam always hated Halloween.”

Karen snorts out a surprised laugh, almost choking on it. She pauses to catch her breath, giving Jess the first glimpse of a genuine smile Jess has seen her wear. It’s...nice. Warm. It transforms her entire face, somehow, makes it less stern and more motherly.

“Oh, don’t we all,” Karen says. “Well, welcome to the club. I wish I could say that it’s all uphill from here.” She turns back to the tea things on the counter, pulling the teabags from the pot and laying out flowered cups on matching saucers. “You want something to eat? I baked up a pie this morning.”

Despite everything, Jess can’t help but smile.

“I could go for pie,” she says.


End file.
